by Kim Holtrop
The Fruitport District Library Board has been considering renovating the library in Pomona Park for the past several years, and have just met with the Village Council to confer on this issue.
The library board has been working with local architects Matt Wakely and Kyle Osterhart to brainstorm tentative renovation ideas for the library. At first unsure of whether the library could feasibly remain in Pomona Park, the board considered several other locations for the library, but the option that best fit the community’s wants and needs, as well as the library’s needs, was to keep the Pomona Park location.
From October 2023 through May 2024, Matt Lubbers-Moore, the FDL director, along with the library board, conducted a six-month survey which asked residents of the Fruitport area what they thought about the various facets of the proposed renovation. Over 50 percent of respondents wanted to keep the library in the park, a sentiment likewise held by the most of the library board members. Many respondents also expressed their desires to see positive changes brought to the library, such as increased parking, handicap accessibility, an improved septic tank, more accessible restrooms, more space for books, a larger community room, study space, a children’s area, among other things.
In the October 20 Village Council meeting, the present library board members, along with Matt Wakely, made their request to the council to keep the library in Pomona Park. The council unanimously decided to grant this request, and the two groups will reconvene in the following months to look at more detailed schematics for the proposed renovations.
In a statement released alongside the survey results, the library board stated that funding for the renovations “will be done through saving, fundraising, grant writing, and other means other than raising taxes,” and that “the library has no plans to raise the community’s taxes.”
For more information on the Fruitport District Library, visit fruitportlibrary.org or call 231-366-6107.